AN Army corporal was watching an object in the water off the Sligo coastline. A pot? A body? In fact it was an almost completely submerged. . . bale of hay, writes Lorna Siggins.
Would it come in on this tide? "Ah no, Sir, nor the next," the corporal replied. "It will come in about a quarter of a mile down, it will go out maybe half a mile, it will go in and out. . . By tomorrow evening, round about Ballysadare Bay, that one will land."
The corporal was absolutely accurate in his prediction, drawing on days, months, years of personal interaction with the sea. It may no longer hold true now within certain sectors of State administration, but such experience of the "peculiarities of the coast" was once held in the utmost regard by a government, and its senior military personnel.
In fact, by the close of the second World War, the Department of Defence judged that the Coast Watching Service, to which the aforementioned corporal was affiliated, was "an integral part of the defences of the State". Its "very simplicity" was what made it work so well, according to Dr Michael Kennedy of the Royal Irish Academy, who has published a new book on the subject.
It was a simplicity which involved working in very harsh conditions, Kennedy records in Guarding Neutral Ireland: The Coast Watching Service and Military Intelligence, 1939-1945, published by Four Courts Press. For instance, on Sunday, September 3rd, 1939, Cpl Colum Mockler went to Mass in Glencolumbkille, Co Donegal, and notified all the volunteers in his platoon that they were to report for duty. Their "post" was initially an Army bell tent on a wild and windy cliff top at Rossan Point.
Accommodation in the form of basic concrete huts or look-out posts was constructed with some "urgency" at 83 strategic locations extending from Ballagan Head east of Dundalk in Co Louth round to Donegal's Inishowen Head. In the interim, some had to do with "sods and sandbags", derelict signal towers, and even an upturned boat for shelter - the latter arrangement occurring in Parkmore, Co Kerry.
Coastwatchers cooked their own food on open fires or Primus stoves, and worked in shifts of between eight and 12 hours on the trot. Most were unarmed, apart from those assigned to the look-out post at Fenit in Kerry. Their role was one of passive defence and information gathering, but this could extend to administering first aid and "treating survivors kindly" .
Equipment for duty included telescope, binoculars, silhouette guides to types of aircraft and ships, a logbook, signal flags for semaphore, lamps and a bicycle. As Kennedy notes, a fixed point compass card or bearing plate fixed on true north, including bearings and distances to local landmarks, was added to the list in the autumn of 1940 as the battle of the Atlantic intensified.
The "early warnings" provided by the information gathered was referred to G2, the Irish military intelligence. Kennedy notes that speed of communication was an early flaw in the system. Even fast pedalling wasn't the most efficient, and one coastwatcher who arrived breathless at a Garda station found it was closed for well over an hour. In spite of the prohibitive cost at the time, telephones were installed, and "Defence message - priority" became the standard signal to operators to clear the lines. Attempts were being made to wind down the service in early 1945, but evidence emerged of a submarine "war" off Ireland.
On March 12th, 1945, 11 Germans in liferafts landed on cliffs below Galley Head lighthouse in Co Cork after their submarine hit an underwater mine near the Fastnet. Some 37 remaining crew were picked up by the Courtmacsherry lifeboat. Lieut Douglas Gageby, late editor of this newspaper, was the G2 officer who interviewed the officers and crew.
He concluded that they were "fit, steady of nerve and convinced of the rightness of their cause. Even when it is obvious that they know the invading armies can't be beaten back, they hope for compromise peace, anti-communist alliance or some other formula. In short, no lack of guts."
EIMEAR "Bridie" Browne may not be too familiar with look-out posts - some now appearing as waypoints on coastal walks - but she retains a clear mind map of almost every lighthouse on this 7,800 km coastline. In 2004, she cycled around them all in aid of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, and she is now back fundraising again. This time, her challenge is rowing the entire length of the Shannon to raise money for a charity called Helping Hands Cambodia, in memory of a late close friend, Eugene McGreevy, a bus driver killed in a crash in Roscommon last year. Every €20 raised will purchase a bike for Cambodian families in rural areas, she says, and she intends to augment sponsorship raised with bucket collections at traditional music sessions en route. That route is 250 km, beginning last week (July 24th) with a journey from the Shannon "Pot" or source to Lough Allen, which she crossed in a single scull. The Civil Defence and sub-aqua clubs are providing safety support, and a good contact at Ardnacrusha intends to ensure that the turbines there are "switched off" during her passage.
Browne hopes to arrive in Dolan's Bar, Limerick, on Monday, August 4th, sore hands and all, and further details on the cause are available from website www.helpinghandscambodia.com